‘Liking this pic’ on Facebook is a scam !

We have all seen messages in our Facebook timelines such as these : “Like this pic in 3 seconds and watch what happens” or “Click this if you want to save the Rhino” or “Comment Jump on the picture and watch the Bear eat him” etc. etc. etc.

For heavens sake – IGNORE ! Absolutely NOTHING will happen. You are only making scammers money!!!

How ?

This is how Facebook Scam works: Someone starts the post usually containing a picture and a comment asking you to add your Comment and Like the image to see “something cool” or “save the cat” or “help this child”. This is shared with family and friends. Since your friend posted the pic you trust it so you click on the link or add your comment and click on Like. When nothing happens you ignore it and carry on thinking you must have done it wrong.

Here is an example:

I was asked to Like and add the Comment: Train.

You will notice that this post has 44 689 Likes, 21 802 comment 3054 shares. So clearly people are doing it.

What these people are not realising is that these posts get thousands of interactions in the forms of Comments, Likes and Shares and this is Facebook Gold. The more interactions a post has, the higher it is featured in the newsfeeds. This is due to the way Facebook values content using its Edge Rank algorithm.

So where is the money part ?

Companies would love to have their products where you will see them. So companies buy these fake posts of trains and bears for for hundreds of Dollars and simply change the image to their company brand/ product. Due to the previous interactions their products are seen to be very important and therefore catapulted to the top of your newsfeed where you see it as “valued content”

Tada!

So in summary:

Of course when we see a picture of a sick child who just wants to get to 100 000 Likes before they die, we rush to click on Like. Shame, poor kid. Of course we want to Save the Rhino before they are extinct and stop their horns from making people horny. So we click on Share.

Scammer pray on our emotions – they are counting on the fact that some of us will do as we are told. So next time you see this rubbish – don’t fall for it and stop helping these scammer make money.

Now share this Blog Post in the next 10 minutes and Like it too, oh and add your comment below and add it to Instagram and YouTube and and and and and and and….